From: Lawrence DeBivort (debivort@umd5.umd.edu)
Date: Thu 05 Dec 2002 - 15:48:53 GMT
While trying to find the Aliens Act that Jeremy cited, I ran into this, fyi.
We talk from time to time about the loss of a community and its traditions:
"The Russian army’s presence in Finland was the reason also to the arrival
of the first groups of Muslims in the country. The Muslim soldiers were
mostly Kazan Tatars or Bashkirs, whereas the first stabile community,
however, was the result of the arrival of Mishär Tatar merchants in late
19th century. Before the Russian revolution most salesmen had their families
in the regions of departure, but in the beginning of the 1920’s families and
other refugees came to Finland (Halén 1999; Leitzinger 1999). When the first
Islamic congregation was founded in 1925 it had 528 members, in 1935 the
members were 669 and in 1978 the membership of the Helsinki and Tampere
congregations was 938 (Halén 1979, 5). The Tatars are a well-established
religious, cultural and linguistic Turkic minority. It is significant that
the small group has managed to preserve the knowledge of the Tatar language
for even five generations. The publication activity of the Tatars has been
extensive. Publications include religious texts, poetry, plays, novels etc.
as well as a few periodicals, the earliest from 1925 (ibid.).
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